Historical subjects as seen in movies vary in perspective due to many factors, chief among which is time. The passing of time changes opinions, positions, societal customs and fashions, and even basic facts can be reassessed. Thus, an event, or […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Insurgent (2015) ☆ 1/2
The second of four planned Divergent series dystopian adventures (Allegiant will be split into two parts) suffers from the same issues as the first one, and simply isn’t very compelling. A post-apocalyptic society is divided into five factions, each of which contributes […]
Continue reading »Rear Window (1954) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Among the greatest pleasures I have experienced while going to the movies is to see classic films of the past on the big screen. This afternoon I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I’ve seen it before in a theatre, when […]
Continue reading »The Gunman (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Sean Penn an action movie star? Sort of, in The Gunman, where he portrays a “security expert” / hit man who finds himself in trouble eight years after one particular assignment in the Congo. It’s an international action movie, with […]
Continue reading »Red Army (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
It’s unusual for documentary features to get theatrical runs, at least around here in northern New Jersey, but Red Army is the exception. It chronicles the most famous hockey players in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and ’80s, when the […]
Continue reading »Focus (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
While I am generally not a big fan of movies in which nothing is as it seems and nobody is who they seem to be, I do appreciate filmmaking that genuinely fools me with strong plotting, characterization and intelligence. Focus is […]
Continue reading »Run All Night (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
I’ve seen a lot of movies like this over the years, wherein crime syndicates are ripped apart by internal strife, questions of honor and family, and violent wrongs perpetrated by people who don’t know any other way to survive. There […]
Continue reading »Chappie (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
There are few visionaries in science-fiction cinema, but one of them is Neill Blomkamp, the South African writer-director behind District 9, Elysium and now Chappie (and soon, the next installment of Alien, which plans to dispense with Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, […]
Continue reading »Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Dominance. Submission. Trust. While the movie Fifty Shades of Grey purports to be all about kinky sex — and it has several softcore sex scenes — it is less about the kinky stuff than it is about trust, which I found […]
Continue reading »The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
I liked the first film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, pretty well, and watched it last night again because Barbara had never seen it. Today we saw the sequel, which, like most sequels, just isn’t quite up to the level […]
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